While innovations in teaching seem to come and go every few years, two North County school districts are so committed to one new method that they’ve named soon-to-open schools after it.

It’s called design thinking, and it’s coming to Poway and Vista unified school districts.

Vista Innovation and Design Academy — already referred to as VIDA within the Vista Unified School District — opens Monday at 340 Olive Ave., the former site of Washington Middle School. The magnet school will serve grades six through eight.

Design 39 Campus opens Wednesday at 17050 Del Sur Ridge, San Diego, in the Poway Unified School District. The school will have preschool through sixth grade its first year and add additional grades each year until it includes eighth-graders.

Design thinking begins with identifying a problem and understanding how someone will benefit from its solution, then following a series of specific steps that include brainstorming and researching before reaching a solution.

Design 39 Principal Sonya Wrisley said the school sometimes is referred to as a startup because people liken it to a new business venture.

The concept has wide applications in business and is being adopted at schools as a way of making project-based learning more focused and meaningful.

With the concept of design thinking still foreign to many people, Chagala posted a video on his school’s website to help explain its benefits.

“The design thinking process provides us a common language for problem solving, and it gives students a consistent message and steps for engaging in problem-solving,” Chagala said in the video.

Design thinking has six steps. The first is to identify a problem, which for students could include studying history, math, science or even reading a book. The next step is empathy, or understanding who will be helped through interviews or other research.

Next comes defining the focus, or identifying what is needed and who needs it. That step is followed by ideating, or brainstorming without fear of failure.

“We often say, ‘Begin with the most obvious worst idea, and put it up on the board,’ ” VIDA faculty member Ellen Crews said in the video on her school’s website. “That means no other idea can be worse, and it builds the confidence of all the participants.”

The final two steps are creating prototypes and testing the solution.

Wrisley said one of the first examples of design thinking at her school will be looking at how the playground is used.

“We’re going to let kids design what recess time might look like,” she said, describing how kindergartners and first-graders will collaborate. “Those little guys will share it with the upper grades. They might create new games. We’re leaving it for the kids to design. Rather than giving them the same thing each year, we’re saying, ‘What would make it fun for all kids?’ ”

Wrisley said the school will have several “makeries” where students will make prototypes of their projects in various media including clay, cardboard, paint, wood and electronics.